Forward error correction (FEC) is a commonly used to improve reliability for interactive audio conferencing in which audio frames are transmitted over a transmission channel. FEC may be used to recover from frame losses during transmission; however, due to a generally low delay playout/playback constraint for received audio frames at a decoder/receiver, it is not practical to expect recovery of all frame losses under challenging frame loss patterns. This makes it difficult to maintain speech intelligibility and meaningful conversation when frame losses are inevitable and when there is the tight playout delay constraint.